Every year we have a ball when Budd J68FF, Chris J68HF and all the guys come down to Chateau Devaux, Saint Lucia! This year was no exception, a super group indeed. We had a great get together at the villa and enjoyed each other’s company. We had a great dinner together also! I will let the pictures speak for themselves! Have Fun Every Day is Budd’s line!
The Crew: WJ1B Harrold, J68FF Budd, J68HF Chris, W6LDX Joe, W6PNG Paul, KO7M Jeff, KI8R Mike and K0BBC Matt

J6 Portable has started the second “phase” of getting Rosemond J69BB, back on air (Phase one here). This time on HF. We were sourcing an HF radio for him, but he took the bull by the horns and got himself an Icom 725! We assisted in getting him his radio cleared, customs form, duty free, etc. Once the radio was in his shack it was time to look at putting up antennae!
So the crew J66SJ Cyril, J66CD Ian and J69DS Frans got together and started the process of planning and going there.
Rosemond still had a dual band wire antenna, which we strung up here at J69DS qth and it showed fine! So off we went on a Sunday morning and climbed the breadfruit tree a good 30 feet up. Tied one end in there and strung it across his qth to a tree on the other side. This in theory looked really good, but in reality the swr was sky high all over. We suspected it was caused by the ladder line being partially on and over his galvanized roof.
By this time we were sweating it out in temperatures hovering around 33 degrees with humidity just shy of being rain! With the tuner it was useable so we decided let it run and see what gives. We all left and went to our qth, we could hear J69BB ok but it was not as good as we wanted. So the plan was to move the center of the antenna to the tree and stretch the legs outwards. This time we decided earlier was better, the plan was to leave here at 6 am! We got up on the Saturday and it was raining so a no go was the consensus. We looked at the afternoon but the weather was not with us. So we choose the Sunday morning, and this time we were ok! Off we went to J69BB’s qth to move the antenna.
Ian J66CD, climbed again into the breadfruit tree. We loosened and moved the antenna to where Rosemond said he had it years ago. Stuck the analyzer on it and oh no, swr still high. Something had to be wrong with the antenna. But we came prepared this time! We had a 40 meter dipole ready to go. So down came the one antenna and up went the other. So easy to write but what fun it is to do, getting those wires all through the branches etc. on the tree! We got it in place checked the swr and, voila, 1.5 and good to go!
Routed the coax in the shack and Cyril, J66SJ, did the routing and tidying up of the cabling there.
7.200 Mhz here we come, the Saint Lucia Net was on. So we all checked in with Matthew J69AK, the Net controller. Signals were perfect.
Rosemond was all smiles, he even had to relay a station in to the net (vp2eih Ira) so receive was very good indeed.
Of course a 40 tuning into 80 meters is not really a good idea. but we tried anyways, with the obvious poor results.
We all decided we would take the antenna with us and check it, possibly convert it to a G5RV and come back to string it up again!
We left and went to Cyril’s place and had a qso with Rosemond from there with good signals, and when Frans got home also did a test and good signals there also on 40 meters.

So we shall return one more time and put up a G5RV or similar so he can get on 80 and join the CEWN net also.

We did go back the following Saturday and put up the G5RV and Rosemond was very happy to get onto 80 meters. The following week we had TS Matthew come through and Rosemond was the Net Cotrol for the CEWN for the better part of that Wednesday

UPDATE#2

TS Matthew snpped the breadfruit tree the G5RV was tied off to in half. Luckily it fell into the courtyard and did not do any damage to his home.
His XYL tied of the antenna in a temporary fashion as an interim solution

UPDATE #3

We went got the remains of the G5RV and found that the ladder line snapped in a few places. We made a full size 80 Meter dipole last night. This morning we all went there and put up the 80 meter dipole and made sure it was working fine. The J6 Portable crew all checked into the local 40 meter net from there before we left.

It was with great joy that we saw the article in the August edition of the QST magazine put out by the ARRL
It really made the youngsters super proud to see that even the ARRL would recognize them!A screen shot of the QST page with the article. Go get your copy!